Introduction: While a considerable amount of extant scholarship describes the importance of and strategies for improving the postsecondary pathways of Black engineering students, most literature is contextualized within 4-year institutions. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to illuminate Black engineering students' experiences at…

Using administrative data from nearly 270,000 transfer-intending students who began at 70 community colleges across three state systems, this paper seeks to identify a set of metrics that will be useful to community college leaders as they formatively assess their colleges' efforts to improve STEM transfer outcomes. We find that a relatively…

Many states have enacted policies to increase accountability for 2- to 4-year institutions in an effort to increase degree completion (Sponsler, Pingel, & Anderson, 2015). Reform initiatives, including Guided Pathways (Bailey, Jaggers, & Jenkins, 2015), have developed mechanisms for 2-year students to have structured, sequential course…

This study longitudinally examined the experiences of four different student cohorts who participated in Adelante, a sustained orientation/transfer program designed to assist students in the transfer process from the community college to a baccalaureate-degree granting university. The researcher found that students positively perceived the…

National Assocation for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) members and staff traveled to Atlanta to present and participate in the 16th annual National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students (NISTS) conference, which serves professionals who directly support transfer students, conduct transfer-related research, and create policy.…

Community colleges enroll almost half of U.S. undergraduates and were predicted to produce 12% of the workforce for STEM professions in 2018. Half of these students are the first in their families to attend college and therefore are more likely unfamiliar with the steps required to transfer to four-year universities or internship programs.…

With more and more students making community college the starting point of their postsecondary education, there is potential in the pipeline; tapping into it promises great rewards. Transfer has long been integral to the community college mission, but navigating the path to the four-year degree continues to be a challenge. Transfer students have…

Kristine H. Strickland reviews the variety of barriers on community college students' path to transfer and completion. Though community college transfer students can be as successful as transfer students from four-year institutions, Strickland argues that both two-year and four-year institutions need to do more to prepare students for transfer and…

Adult community college students, age 25 and older, have been understudied in the extensive college transfer literature, which otherwise focuses on traditional-age college students age 18 through 24, or on students of unspecified age. According to the theoretical framework of academic momentum articulated by Clifford Adelman (2006), enrollment…

Background/Context: Transfer from community colleges to selective four-year institutions is an issue that assumes great importance for the democratization of postsecondary education. Yet research on what influences transfer to selective four-year institutions is surprisingly sparse. Transfer research typically lumps four-year schools receiving…

James Madison University (JMU) and Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) teamed up in April 2014 to build a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between their respective four-year and two-year honors programs. This MOU is the basis for the continued work between these two institutions to collaborate and find research to assist other interested…

The introduction of SB-1440 in 2010, also known as the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act, appeared to be an opportunity for California educators and policy makers to address the achievement gap among community college students with the introduction of the streamlined associate degree for transfer (ADT) (Padilla, 2010). If implemented…

This qualitative investigation of higher education institutional development addresses new universities that were former community colleges in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Stemming from an original study conducted nearly two decades earlier, this investigation's data were collected from the same institutions and from similar…

Student transfer processes from the California Community Colleges (CCC) to the California State University (CSU) have been simplified somewhat over the past few years, but they remain complex and confusing for most transfer students, according to students, administrators, and staff at several community colleges and CSU campuses. Transfer…

This article contributes to the literature addressing the needs of increasing student enrollment and retention across university campuses by identifying programs where progress can be made to improve the student retention rate and increase university enrollment. This article derives from a provisional program that began in the fall of 2009 at a…